Prof Yang Xia Finds New Ways to Image Cartilage

Osteoarthritis is a devastating disease resulting from the degradation of articular cartilage in joints. Often by the time osteoarthritis causes pain, it is quite advanced and difficult to treat. But what if we could find a way to detect osteoarthritis earlier?  Could we then find better treatments? CBR member Yang Xia, of the Department of Physics, is working toward this goal by developing new imaging methods based on Magnetic Resonance Imaging. In the February 2009 issue of NMR in Biomedicine, Xia published a study about the Effect of Phosphate Electrolyte Buffer on the Dynamics of Water in Tendon and Cartilage (Volume 22, Pages 158-164). He concludes that

"This result has two significant implications. First, in in vitro cartilage studies, it is important to choose the soaking/preservation solution carefully. Some of the ions in the salt solution may have vital effects on the water dynamics of the tissue. Second, in in vivo cartilage studies and clinical diagnosis, if a suitable electrolyte that has strong effects on proton exchange can be found, manipulation of the laminar appearance of cartilage in clinical MRI could become a new image contrast approach for monitoring ultrastructural changes in cartilage degradation due to osteoarthritis and other joint diseases."

First author ShaoKuan Zheng is a Research Associate in Xia's laboratory. This work was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.